Identity and inspiration on display in 'i found god in myself'

Dominic Clay was prepared to be on the defensive when the exhibition "i found god in myself" opened at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.

Timed to coincide with Women's History Month, the show features artworks based on choreopoems (monologues performed with dance and music) from Ntozake Shange's "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf." A once-radical anthem for black sisterhood, Shange's 1970's performance piece-turned-Broadway hit contains the stories of seven women who navigate sexism, racism and mental and physical abuse.

It still reads as culturally aggressive, with a raw anger directed as much at black men as at whites.

Clay, the museum's assistant curator, is 31, heterosexual and black, and the show made his male-bashing alarm go off.

He previously knew Shange's writing mostly through Tyler Perry's 2010 flashy film adaptation, "For Colored Girls." The exhibition gave him a different perspective.

This article originally appeared in the Houston Chronicle. For the full article, click here.